Optical transmission systems suffer from phase ripple effects which are introduced by various optical components or subsystems (dispersion compensation devices, optical multiplexers, filters and amplifiers) which are used to transmit and process optical signals. Current optical transmission systems, particularly dense wavelength division multiplexing, DWDM, systems use more expensive components which produce less phase ripple. Further, it has been proposed to employ less costly components for implementing an optical transmission system which leads to an increased level of undesired phase ripple that can only be mitigated by keeping transmission distances of the optical transmission system comparatively low. I.e., when avoiding the use of expensive hardware, transmission distance has to be limited to account for the impact of phase ripple.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved method of operating an optical transmission system and an improved optical transmission system which avoid the disadvantages of the prior art.